With 80,000 festival visitors, and including personnel a total of roughly 86,000 attendees in 2011, the Wacken Open Air Festival attracts all kinds of metal music fans and hard rock from around the world. The festival, first held in 1990 as a small event for local bands, is now one of the biggest festivals worldwide. Including 1 track each of: AVANTASIA, ACCEPT, APOCALYPTICA & AVANTI! ORCHESTRA, SAXON, STEEL PANTHER, HAMMERFALL, DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT, SLAYER, MOTÖRHEAD, KREATOR, HEAVEN SHALL BURN, CHILDREN OF BODOM, AMON AMARTH, EMPEROR
Pixies at Hurricane Festival 2014
In their early years, Pixies’ jarring pop sound influenced bands such as Nirvana, Radiohead, The Strokes and Weezer and are subsequently credited with having a big influence on the alternative rock boom of the 1990s. The Pixies’ legacy and popularity grew in the years following their break-up (1993), leading to sold-out world tours following their reunion in 2004. In June 2013, the indie-rock legend released their first new material in almost ten years! The latest album ‘Indie City’ charted #6 in the UK album charts (#3 on US Top Alternative Albums and #1 on US Top Tastemaker Albums) and is after ‘Bossanova’ (UK #3, 1990) their biggest chart success in the UK.
Dropkick Murphys at Hurricane Festival 2014
Dropkick Murphys’ 2004 single “Tessie” became the band’s first hit and one of their biggest charting singles to date. The band’s final Hellcat release, 2005’s The Warrior’s Code, included the song “I’m Shipping Up to Boston”; the song was featured in the 2006 Academy Award-winning movie “The Departed”, and went on to become a Platinum-selling single. 2007’s “The Meanest of Times” made its debut at No. 20 on the Billboard charts and featured the successful single, “The State of Massachusetts”, while 2011’s “Going Out in Style” was an even bigger success, making its debut at No. 6, giving the band their highest-charting album to date. Dropkick Murphys’ eighth studio album, Signed and Sealed in Blood was released in 2013 making its debut at No. 9 on the Billboard charts.
Interpol at Hurricane Festival 2014
Interpol’s debut album ‘Turn on the Bright Lights’ (2002) was critically acclaimed, making it to tenth position on the NME’s list of top albums in 2002 as well as No. 1 on Pitchfork Media’s Top 50 Albums of 2002. Subsequent records ‘Antics’ (2004) and ‘Our Love to Admire’ (2007) have confirmed the band’s initial success and turned them into a commercial and critical success. Having first performed at Luna Lounge along with other notable bands like The Strokes, Longwave, The National and Stellastarr, they are one of the bands associated with the New York City indie music scene, and were one of several groups that emerged from the post-punk revival of the 2000s.
Through The Eyes Of Yuja
With more than 120 performances a year, Yuja Wang lives a nomadic lifestyle. Travelling the world professionally, two extra small trolley suitcases carry the essentials for a two week trip: dresses, shoes, iPad, iPod and Smartphone. Yuja is 27 and leads a new generation of pianists who can play anything with comfort thanks to their phenomenal technique and strong self-confidence. “Through the Eyes of Yuja” reveals us this artist in a very personal way, equipped with a portable camera and her smartphone the film wants to be a kind of digital diary, a reflection of the image Yuja casts to the world as well as a phantasmagorical world the directors, Anaïs and Oliver Spiro, tend to loom about this image.
Jonas Kaufmann – You Mean The World To Me – Documentary
Jonas Kaufmann traces the paths of the great singers and composers during the last years of the Weimar Republic (between Germany’s defeat at the end of World War I in 1918, and Hitler’s rise to power in 1933). The film is focussing on three pillars: Franz Léhar, Richard Tauber and the heydays of the “Silver Operetta” era; Robert Stolz, Joseph Schmidt and the invention of sound movies; and the diversification of musical styles through international commercialization. It includes excerpts of Jonas Kaufmann’s correpetitions with Stellario Fagone in Munich and the recording session for his album in the Funkhaus Berlin. Also available: Concert “You Mean The World To Me” (70′), Cat.No. 9151
Satiesfictions – Saunters with Eric Satie
Always armed with a melon, umbrella and wisecracks, he is not only on the outside the strangest fellow in French music history: Erik Satie was a composer, designer, church founder, PR pioneer and master of aperçus. In playful episodes the documentary “Satiesfictions” by Youlian Tabakov and Anne-Kathrin Peitz illuminates the phenomenon that is Satie: His countless ads evolve into real commercials and his drawings into cartoons. Interwoven with accounts by Satie associates and music experts, the film offers a unique insight into Satie’s cosmos of word and sound, featuring divas, dogs, and children, pianists playing on pianos stacked atop each other or performers turning into “musical furniture”.
Miloš – Heartstrings
In early 2011 The UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper claimed, “The Classical Guitar has a new hero”. That man is thirty-year-old Miloš Karadaglic from Montenegro. “I want to wake this instrument from hibernation”, he says. From growing up in war-torn Yugoslavia, discovering a battered guitar in his parents’ bedroom, Heartstrings tells the story of his love affair with the guitar, taking it to concert halls around the world and restoring it to ist rightful place in the pantheon of classical music. The documentary was filmed throughout 2012, the breakthrough year on the concert stage for Miloš with sold-out debut performances and tours around the word, and charts the guitarist’s story to date.
Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra – A special feature in celebration of the maestro’s 80th birthday!
On the occasion of Claudio Abbado’s 80th birthday in June 2013, this special feature throws a glance at Abbado’s work with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. The close connection between the orchestra and its conductor is documented by excerpts from rehearsals and concert recordings as well as personal interviews with the maestro talking about composers, his approach to their works and the collaboration with the orchestra. —– With excerpts from: Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART “Haffner Symphony” and Requiem (featuring René Pape), Anton BRUCKNER Symphony No. 1, Gustav MAHLER Symphony No. 9 and Adagio from Symphony No. 10, Ludwig van BEETHOVEN Incidental Music to Goethe’s Tragedy “Egmont” featuring Juliane Banse and Bruno Ganz.
Deep Purple at Wacken Open Air 2013
Deep Purple, together with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, have been referred to as the “unholy trinity of British hard rock and heavy metal in the early to mid-Seventies”. They were listed in the 1975 Guinness Book of World Records as “the globe’s loudest band” for a 1972 concert at London’s Rainbow Theatre, and have sold over 100 million albums worldwide, including 17.5 million certified units in the US. Their recent album Now What?! (2013) brought them again on well-deserved Nr.1 Chart positions all over the place!